These sample scans are from the original record. You will get scans of the full pages or articles where the surname you searched for has been found.

Your web browser may prevent the sample windows from opening; in this case please change your browser settings to allow pop-up windows from this site.

Merchants and traders in Aberdeen
(1399-1631)A. M. Munro searched the council registers of the royal burgh of Aberdeen, and compiled this list of burgesses admited to the borough. The entries prior to 1591 were contained in lists engrossed in the council registers at the close of the minutes for the year ending at Michaelmas, but after that date in addition to the annual lists, which are continued, there is almost always a separate minute of admission under the respective dates. The records before 1591 are not only sparser, often with no more than a name, but are also lacking for 1401-1405, 1413-1432, 1434-1435, 1518-1519, 1557 and 1562-1564 - other blanks were filled in from the guildry accounts where such existed. Guild burgesses were allowed unfettered trading rights in Aberdeen; simple burgesses could only deal in Scottish wares (so being barred from the lucrative English and Flemish imports and exports); trade burgesses were limited to their own particular trades; and the council was able ex gratia to create honourary burgesses, who were accorded the full privileges of burgesses of guild and trade, and among whom numbered members of almost every family of note in Aberdeenshire. Burgesses could thus be created by descent, by apprenticeship into a trade, or ex gratia, and in the later portions of this roll the precise circumstances are usually given, sometimes also with the name of a cautioner or surety. Burgesses, masters and cautioners are all indexed here.